http://www.gamewholesale.com/ebay/deo_gratias.jpg
Deo Gratias, a god sim by Cryo (a company known for creating sub-par AGs). This game is so rare these days that even finding a screenshot of it is hard. Sadly it is not worth much, due to its poor quality. It has a very long unskippable intro, confusing controls, no real goal, poorly explained concepts nothing really seemed to work in it. I quickly gave up on it, in part due to the fact that the intro was over 5min, and unskippable.

SL the game (sorry, can't even find an image of this online)
Ever wanted to take care of public transportation in Stockholm? Well, this game will let you do that. It was not a horrible public transportation simulator, but it was not great either. You could buy & sell busses, set up buss/train/boat lines in and around Stockholm, and your goal was to make money. The game actually let you destroy buildings, with no negative consequences (as far as I could tell) (there were exceptions, if you decided to destroy an important landmark, then the game would give you a game over screen).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi…lcross_map.PNG
Spellcross. This game is just okay. It is a turnbased strategy game with okay graphics, okay AI, okay gameplay, and okay units. The game was not bad, but not good either. And this is also a game that I never have heard anyone even mention. The only novel part of this game was the enemies. You played as modern humans and had to fight evil fantasy creatures (undead, orcs and such)

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/7033/98600957.jpghttp://img828.imageshack.us/img828/6355/29916546.jpg
Drakar och Demoner: Själarnas Brunn (Dragonfire: The Well of Souls) was an attempt to make a CRPG out of one of Sweden's most beloved pen & paper RPGs. If you roleplayed in Sweden during the 80s & 90s, then you came into contact with Drakar & demoner, it was nearly impossible not to. This is a rather average game, really. The graphics were slightly sub-par for its time, the voice acting was…Swedish (and that is not really a good thing, Swedish voice actors tends to sound like they are forcing the words out of their mouths. Swedish actors also tends to do this when they want to sound dramatic in live action movies). The first screenshot is from the chracter selection menu, while the second one is in game.
The characters are: Some girl with average stats, leaning towards dexterity, some guy with average stats leaning towards strength, a duck (every fantasy setting needs a race of its own, something that makes it special… and in Drakar & demoner this was ducks), with slow strength and high dexterity, and a half orc with low dexterity but high strength. Almost everyone who played this game picked the duck, because its a duck (and no other reason). Combat is simplistic, and rather slow paces, but it is not horrible. Overall, it is a nice historical curiosity, one that for some strange reason was translated to several languages (and sold poorly everywhere).
The company that made this game (Target interactive) later changed its name, and started to produce some of the most complex grand scale strategy on the market, namely Europa Universalis and all the other EU-like games.

For those interested, Drakar & demoner (fantasy) and Mutant (post apocalyptic sci-fi with a slightly humorous twist) are two of Swedens most beloved RPGs of all time. But only Swedes seem to even be aware of these games. Target Games (former Äventyrsspel, the company behind them) decided to aim for a larger market, and created Mutant Chronicles and Drakar & Demoner Cronopia, two games that were almost universally hated in Sweden. Interestingly enough they were well received in USA, and even though Target Games has long since shut its doors, Mutant Chronicles lives on in USA.

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Mr. Gimmick is an interesting NES game. It had the most advanced sound chip of any NES game ever to be (officially) released (I don't know if any home brew had a more advanced sound chip, but I would suspect that none does), so the sound is incredible for an 8bit system, the graphics and animations are also top of the line, and the levels are challenging and well crafted. So why has most people not heard about this game? Because it was only released in Japan & Scandinavia, and and the very end of the NES's lifespan. Very few copies were actually made, and I guess it was considered to expensive to manufacture, due to the sound chip. A working copy can set you back ~200€ these days.

Alrik Fassbauer

September 15th, 2011 14:26

Mine are probably :

- Leviathan - The Tone Rebellion. Still haven't played it (shame on me).

Both are games of a genre that doesn't exist : Political satire games. Really, no joking ! The game takes place within a starship, the so-called "Galaxis Futura". The "Captain Gysi" (Gysi is is real-life name !) was the major head of a left-wing German party, the PDS, which was some kind of successor of the GDR's only party, the SED. Later, this party has fused with another one to become a new party called "Die Links" ("The Left One"), which is in trouble right now mainly because of its inept heads.

In these games, major politicians of the time around the turn of the millennium are ridiculed, and "Captain Gysi" is the only one who can resolve all of this chaos the other politicians have made.

Other obscure games I have are "advertisement games", often adventure games (but not always), which are … well, kind of advertisements. Some are done in a reall good way : The first Kellogg's game was a jump & run game, and it had won a few prices, then, bcause it was reall excellent, from a technical point of view.
You can donload it here (it is reall one of the best jumop & run games I've ever played !) : http://werbespiel.blogspot.com/2010/…oggs-land.html - but the game is in German language, though.

Frozen Fireball

September 15th, 2011 20:27

The only obscure game in my collection that I currently remember is Ascension to the throne which IMO, unlike most of the obscure games, is great. It's a semi open-world RPG ( similar to Gothic somehow in terms of overall feeling of exploration) with the turn-based combat system similar to heroes of might & magic series. It was a very addicting game and although I played it around 4 years ago, but I still remember it quite well.
Although it had some drawbacks like lack of any kind of voice acting, bugs and balancing problems and also one of the most meaningless and disappointing endings I have ever seen, but it was a game that quite held my attention while it lasted.

For Alrik:
I own "Der Schatz im Silbersee", an adventure based on Karl May, on 3,5 inch high density floppy discs… (never played through it though).

Motoki

September 15th, 2011 21:08

Offhand I would say maybe Winter Voices, but I've got to have something more obscure than that in the physical realm collecting dust somewhere.

While I was reading about Ascension to the Throne I thought 'Oh that sounds good, I should try to find that game' then I realized it was part of the 1C RPG pack I bought from Gamersgate a while back and I already own it. This is what being a digital download whore gets you, can't even keep track of your own games. :p

And I still want that damned duck RPG! I have looked and looked through official and unofficial channels and I can't find it anywhere. Paradox should put it up for digital download. Price it cheap enough and somebody will buy it (me!). Hell, there are old Genesis games selling on Steam and Gamersgate so there's a market.

Alrik Fassbauer

September 15th, 2011 22:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by bkrueger
(Post 1061092505)

For Alrik:
I own "Der Schatz im Silbersee", an adventure based on Karl May, on 3,5 inch high density floppy discs… (never played through it though).

I have it as well. I even installed it on DOSBOX last year, but I never came past the first "riddle" (there's a bear one must calm down or so).

And I agree : This is somewhat obscure as well.

Another rather obscure game I have is the "Höhlenwelt Saga" card game for the PC.

I actually know only very little about it.

The "Höhlenwelt" is a fantasy setting which was developed by the German fanatsy author Harald Evers.

Unfortunately he died suddenly not too long after completion of this game, and nowadays I cannot find a way to get the patches and the cards that were seemingly once put online for fans (the extra cards could be somehow integrated into the main game).

His family was - according to forum entries - within a religious sect, so they didn't like his work as an author at all. All signs of adoration b the fans at the grave were destroyed by the family - save for the son, maybe, with whom he developed the game.

I also have two odd advertisement games. Pickup express 2 is a game where you pick up goods and then deliver it to another location. Several different brands are represented in the game, and it is horrible. Poor driving controls and the gameplay is incredibly repetitive. It did remind me a bit of Streets of sim city minus the guns (i.e. it was just as horrible, with just as many bugs and poor controls).

And then there was a floorball game that was meant to advertise a type of squash (as in a type of drink) called Mer. I hate floorball (which is a relatively popular sport here in Sweden) so the game did not appeal to me at all.

The Duck RPG is just not worth the effort, believe me. There are many better CRPGs out there.
I suspect that there might be licencing issues involved that prohibits Paradox from doing anything with the game. That or they just don't want to soil their good name.

Ascension to the throne looks quite interesting, I'll have to check it out. I would like to point out that one of my games in the original post is great though. Mr. Gimmick is a 2d platformer that is able to challenge the giants of the genre!

Alrik Fassbauer

September 15th, 2011 23:32

Can you send me these advertisement games ? Or are they too big for that ?

Fnord

September 16th, 2011 00:20

I can't seem to find the discs (they are probably stashed somewhere in a bag together with the other games that I own and never expect to play again), though I found the games online.

I'm a typical, average, generic gamer, liking nearly all the games I own (and I own many), so most of what I have is mass compatible, more or less. Everybody and his brother have played Catacomb 3D and its successors, I guess, but there are other, less known games I own - like, for example …
Depth Dwellers (anaglyphic 3D shooter, 1994) - they meant well. Well.Nitemare 3D (shooter, 1994) - hilarious in a way some little brothers are. Ken's Labyrinth (shooter, 1993) - ditto. An aspiring, talented programmer and a totally untalented (yet well-intentioned) graphics artist sometimes create surprisingly entertaining games.In Extremis (shooter, 1993) - nice atmosphere. Sloppy execution.Cyclones (shooter, 1994) - like Strife, this one's astonishingly complex, just more underdog-gy.Angst - Rahz' Revenge (shooter, 1996) - not just a turd: THE turd. I'd happily vote for this steaming pile of crap if there was a 'worst game ever' vote.Mortail Coil (tactical shooter, 1995) - many great ideas, countless crippling bugs. Plus the worst translation ever - even installing was a challenge. Wetlands (rail shooter, 1995) - great atmosphere, insane difficulty.

Now guess my favorite game genre ^^.

bkrueger

September 16th, 2011 00:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaz
(Post 1061092559)

Depth Dwellers (anaglyphic 3D shooter, 1994) - they meant well. Well.

The 3D glasses packaged with that game lie right before me on my desk….

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaz
(Post 1061092559)

Now guess my favorite game genre ^^.

Text adventures? :S

Fnord

September 16th, 2011 01:08

http://www.abandonia.com/files/games…0Crusade_5.png
Space crusade. This was the first computer game based on the famous Warhammer 40k licence, and a title that not a lot of people seem to be aware of. This particular game was based on the childrens board game Space Crusade, which can be seen as the 40k counterpart to HeroQuest (which was set in the warhammer fantasy world). Unlike HeroQuest you had a team of 5 space marines per "good guy" player, but only one of these were actually useful (the commander), the rest were just too easy to kill. The PC port of the board game was quite faithful, and much like the board game the greatest joy in the PC game was to shoot your friends in the back (the game itself was not very good, and when you get bored you tend to do stupid things). A rather forgettable game that might be of interest to those who played the board game when they were young. Then again, both Space Crusade and HeroQuest are best left as fond memories, these games were meant for children and lack any real depth or complexity.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/imag…mbo1-limbo.jpg
Limbo of the lost. This game would have been doomed to total obscurity if it was not for one tiny detail: The devs stole all their backgrounds from other games! What you are looking at is a screenshot from Limbo of the lost. But what game did they steal that background from? (Oblivion)
They managed to steal background from Oblivion, Thief 3, Unreal tournament 2003 and plenty of other famous games, and somehow they thought they would get away with it. Many other things, like sound clips and even the intro sequence were stolen from other sources. The game itself is an adventure game with stupid puzzles (no real logic in many of them), horribly slow character movement and too many design flaws in general to make it worth playing. I only bought it because of its interesting history.

http://www.gameclassification.com/fi…a-Rike-III.jpg
Svea Rike 3. Another old Paradox title, this one was released just before Europa Universalis. The game plays a lot like a simplified version of Europa Universalis, and your goal here is to take over the Nordic countries. They made another game 4 years later based on the same engine, which had the very same unit sprites, buildings and, well everything, except for the map, called Two Thrones (which I also own). This game was actually marketed as a childrens game, and while it is easier to get into than Europa Universalis, it is still a relatively complex game. The previous Svea Rike titles were based on a popular Swedish board game (named Svea Rike).

Probably doesn't qualify as "obscure" in Europe, but you would have a hard time finding anyone over here who has ever heard of it. I found out about it through The Watch and imported a copy from the UK.

crpgnut

September 16th, 2011 04:31

Hmmm, Aethra Chronicles, Lysandia Phase 1 and Phase 2, War Wizard, Keys to Maramon, Nahlakh, Helherron, etc. I've got all the obscure crpgs from the last few decades :)

crpgnut

September 16th, 2011 04:34

@Jaz-can you list me any other good stealth shooters? I enjoyed Deus Ex 1 and 3, so games like them might work. I might have to find Deus Ex 2 and see if it's any good.

I'm sure there's more oddball games I've owned in the past but I don't recall them. Plenty of ignored games I've purchased on Steam as well via package deals that could qualify.

Jaz

September 16th, 2011 07:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by bkrueger
(Post 1061092572)

Text adventures? :S

Nope, action adventures and other hybrid game types. Actually, most modern day CRPGs would qualify :p.

Quote:

Originally Posted by crpgnut
(Post 1061092604)

@Jaz-can you list me any other good stealth shooters? I enjoyed Deus Ex 1 and 3, so games like them might work. I might have to find Deus Ex 2 and see if it's any good.

As you don't seem to think of the real sneakers like Thief, Hitman, Assassin's Creed etc., I can't think of any game but System Shock 2 right now. By the late nineties I was beyond buying every game that came out, including my once favorite FPS genre. But if you don't mind branching out onto tac shooter territory: there's a definite stealth aspect to most of them - SWAT 3, the Rogue Spear games … especially those.